


The Rainwater Well

by Taselby



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Dragon Age Quest: The Loss of a Friend, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jaws of Hakkon DLC, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 14:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12300843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taselby/pseuds/Taselby
Summary: After so much trauma, so much loss, what’s left? As the Inquisitor struggles to reconcile the death of the elven scout Grandin, Cullen has struggles of his own.Set after the Jaws of Hakkon DLC quest “The Loss of a Friend.”





	The Rainwater Well

_Sleeping for years, pick through what is left_  
_Through the pieces that fell and rose from the depth_  
_From the rainwater well deep as a secret nobody knows_  
        The New Pornographers, “Adventures in Solitude”  
  
~*~*~*~

  
When the second candle in the War Room gutters and dies, Cullen sets aside the preliminary reports from the Frostback Basin and scrubs a hand across his eyes. It’s a futile effort, trying to scour out the rough graininess of too many hours poring over maps and reports and requisitions, reading and sorting them into tidy piles. Some to be forwarded to Leliana and Josephine, some to carry back to his office, and some few to remain here for further review.  
  
He’s not sure precisely when he’d become as much administrator as commander, but tonight he feels it in the dryness of his eyes and the ache in his back. Too many hours. He’s not avoiding sleep, he tells himself firmly. He’s being prepared for tomorrow’s council.  
  
Anyway, idleness brings its own set of complications.  
  
The Inquisitor’s team had returned just before sunset, and the council had been postponed until tomorrow. Something about the reports pulls at him, however, keeping him here long after most people have retired to their chambers or to the tavern. His eyes move from page to page. Nothing seems to be out of order, but he can’t shake the feeling that something is missing.  
  
The reports themselves are complete enough— movements of personnel and supplies, closing of rifts, establishment of camps, and conflicts with the local Avvar tribes, and a request from Scout Harding to personally make final arrangements for a friend numbered among the dead. A single note—Cassandra’s report, but no one else's— mentions an encounter with a rage demon apparently unrelated to a rift, and it’s not the random nature of the demon itself that bothers him so much as its omission from the other papers covering the table.  
  
The cloying aroma of beeswax is heavy in the close air of the war room, a sweetness he doesn’t usually notice, and another candle snuffs itself with a sputter and a curl of pale smoke.

 _Enough_. Cullen smooths a hand over the rough paper and steps away, leaving the tidy stacks for the morning. He swings on his coat and arches, stretching his back, the bones settling and popping. Contrary to barracks rumors, he doesn’t wear his armor all the time, though tonight the halls are cold enough that he misses the heavy warmth.  
  
Josephine’s office is dark as he makes his way out, the fire carefully banked for morning. And beyond her door, the great hall is quiet, just a few Orlesians talking in the corners, and Varric ensconced at his table by the fire, muttering to himself as he writes. A lone soldier crosses from the rotunda to the garden door on her rounds, likely headed for the mages’ tower. Cullen nods in acknowledgement as she passes, the steady clap of his boots against the polished floor echoing off the walls.

 Beyond the outer doors… _bracing_ is possibly the kindest term for the air, the mist balancing on the fine line between water and ice. Tiny droplets prickle on his cheeks, his ears and nose first stinging and then numbing as he steps further away from the doors. The mist softens everything. Like something out of a storybook, torches along the path are ringed in light, and the stones glitter in the shadows. His nose will probably run later, but right now the world is still and perfect. Beautiful.  
  
One more breath of damp air, cold enough to make his chest ache, and Cullen shakes off the moment of whimsy. He heads down the steps rather than going back to cross the rotunda to the bridge. It’s a longer path, but he will see more soldiers on their rounds this way, and it’s good to keep them alert. He makes it halfway across the upper bailey, frosted grass and ice-rimmed puddles crunching under his boots, before he notices Cassandra at the training dummies, breath pluming white around her.  
  
From here, it sounds more like she is attempting to fell a tree than refine her technique, but the dagger-riddled dummy in his own office is proof enough that he shouldn't judge. He shrugs his coat against the chill and pulls the collar higher, something uneasy settling into place deep in his chest next to the reports.

It’s like a puzzle with a missing piece. He can almost feel the shape of it.  
  
He turns away; he’d like to ask Cassandra about the demon, but tonight he has no desire to be recruited as her sparring partner. Tomorrow, then.  
  
“Healing, teaching, protecting. He didn’t train for _this_.”

Cullen doesn’t startle, though he turns very quickly, his heart pounding as his hand drops to where his sword should be. “Maker’s breath. Cole! What have I said about doing that?”  
  
“It’s never felt like murder before.” Cole looks up at him, pale eyes almost lost under his hat. “Cassandra’s all sharp edges right now— she just makes the hurts _more_. You’re not sharp.”

A glance over his shoulder; the Inquisitor’s tower is dark. He turns back and fixes Cole with a look. “Where is he, Cole?”  
  
 “There.” Cole points one pallid finger at the tavern. “You can help.”  
  
Cullen is moving before the boy can finish.  
  
His face stings again at the heat inside the tavern as blood rushes back into numbed flesh. The slightly sour smell of bodies and beer is familiar, as is the wash of conversation. He can’t see the Inquisitor from here, and wouldn’t have thought to look for him at the tavern in the first place. It seems too crowded and… common. It’s an unworthy thought. The Inquisitor has never held himself apart, and if Cullen has never seen him here, that speaks more to Cullen’s habits than the Inquisitor’s.

 _You’re not sharp._ Bull is absent from his usual seat behind the stairs, but some few of the Chargers—those less drunk—see him pass and raise their tankards in his direction. Cullen waves back, distracted, and casts about for more ways to be not sharp, if that’s what is needed of him tonight. A drink is not the worst way to get a bit softer in a tavern, so he maneuvers his way around the small clusters of people, toward the bar. He nods at Cabot by way of greeting.  
  
Cabot is satisfyingly laconic. “Commander.”  
  
“Cabot. Brandy, please,” he asks and slides a half-sovereign coin across the bar.  
  
Cabot arches an eyebrow at the coin and passes him a bottle and an earthenware cup. “You might want to head up. He started without you.” He nods toward the stairs. “You might also want to ask him for a raise while you’re at it.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
~*~*~*~

Upstairs is warmer and quieter, the hum of conversation from below serving to highlight the stillness up here. Everything is darker, more spare, more muted. Even knowing he’s here, Cullen has to look twice to identify the elf in the back corner as the Inquisitor. Just at the edge of the torchlight by the last window, he’s shed the outer coats of his armor and rolled up the sleeves of the under tunic. His pale arms stand out starkly against the brilliant orange fabric; the fingerless white leather glove concealing the mark on his hand is, in contrast, almost lost against his skin. He steadily works at a knot in the end of his braid, strands of primrose yellow hair falling over his shoulders and around his ears, flyaway strands painted gold in the torchlight.  
  
Another missing part of the puzzle falls into place.  
  
Cullen doesn’t get two steps before the Inquisitor arches a brow and fixes him with a look, his eyes bright and golden as sovereign coins. After a long moment he sighs and turns his attention back to unraveling his hair. “Cole needs to leave well enough alone.”  
  
It’s as much of an invitation as he’s likely to get, so Cullen takes it, and sets the brandy on the table next to an unlabeled dark bottle. Patches of melting frost cling to the sides, and the table around it is stained dark with moisture. The Inquisitor has been here for a while.  
  
He sheds his coat and gloves, cuffing his sleeves in a conscious mirror of the Inquisitor’s before sitting across from him at the table. “I believe Cole is actually incapable of leaving things alone.” He works the cork loose from the brandy and pours a measure into the earthenware cup Cabot provided, carefully not inspecting its cleanliness. “He’s concerned.”  
  
The Inquisitor hums at that, and turns his short glass cup—actual glass, not earthenware or  wood, scraping the bottom against the table. The cup itself is plain, the glass uneven and flawed; a measure of clear liquid swirls against the sides. He pushes a lock of hair behind the point of one ear. “There is no need. I’m certain you have other matters that require your attention.”  
  
“Not at the moment.” The dark glaze on the cup is smooth under his fingertips. “I was headed to the tavern already, and I confess, the quiet up here suits me better than downstairs. May I join you?” Never mind that he’s already seated at the table, drink in hand.    
  
The Inquisitor finishes his drink and pours another draught from the dark bottle, wiping his hand on his shirt. “We are not yet under Corypheus’s heel. Feel free while we can yet do so.”  
  
Cullen decides to take that as yes.  
  
Cold air seeps through around the window. Cullen's boots are heavy enough that he can’t feel it on his feet, but it chills the side of him closest to the wall. He consciously relaxes his shoulders, knowing as he does so that he’s working too hard at projecting ease for it to be completely believable. Cole had given him little to go on, and while Cullen can see that something is clearly amiss, he’s not sure what kind of softness the Inquisitor needs from him that Cassandra can’t provide.

Cassandra isn’t what he would call _soft_ , but her awkward courtship with the Inquisitor suggests depths he has not been privileged to see. Still, she seems a better fit for this than himself. Cullen would not be his own first choice for comforting _anyone_.

Then he remembers her assault on the dummy in the training yard, and reconsiders.  
  
It remains, however, that he’s unaccustomed to this, whatever _this_ is. For lack of anything better to do with his hands, he rubs a fingertip over a knot in the wooden tabletop, and drinks.

The brandy is strong and sweet and not quite fruity. He sucks a breath through his teeth and wishes he’d asked for ale instead.  
  
The Inquisitor quirks half a smile. “Is that Antivan?”  
  
Cullen considers the bottle. “It’s not _not_ Antivan.” When the Inquisitor just looks at him, he shrugs, shoulders too light without the weight of his armor, his unprotected back toward the stairs. It’s like an itch that he can’t scratch. “It’s whatever Cabot had behind the bar.”

“So… probably not Antivan, then.”  
  
“No.” He sniffs at the brandy again and sets the cup aside. He can probably give the bottle to Sera. Maybe it would convince her to stop filling his training dummy with bees. There’s a bit of light he can see through the loose boards she tacked up to separate her personal space from the tavern proper, but he can’t tell whether she is there or not.  
  
The knot in the tabletop looks a bit like a face, and now that he’s noticed, he can’t stop seeing it.

When he looks up, the Inquisitor is sitting still—the odd _too still_ stillness that has Sera punching him in the arm and telling him to stop being so _elfy_ —as he sometimes does when lost in thought or forgetful of the humans around him. Those odd eyes blink too slowly, reflective as a cat’s, and the reminder that the Inquisitor is not just a man with pointed ears— that he is different, _other_ — makes the flesh on the back of Cullen’s neck tighten. Cullen knows little about the Dalish beyond wild rumors— blood magic, stealing human infants, talking to trees. He dismisses most of them as wild speculation, as he has learned to dismiss similar stories about Tevinter. Though Dorian is only too happy to confirm the most lurid tales of hedonistic debauchery.    
  
If Kirkwall taught him anything, it’s that blood magic is the resort of the desperate and the power-hungry, and those things occur in all races of people. The Dalish in general seem have little use for humans other than as occasional trading partners, and their contempt for even half human children of elven blood rivals the human prejudice he’s seen. They would have no use for a fully human child. It’s the tree thing he’s actually not sure about, and takes a breath to ask, wanting to break the moment as much as sate his curiosity. Before he can frame the question in a way that only makes him appear curious, as opposed to hopelessly ignorant, the Inquisitor pours another finger of that clear spirit and frost begins to collect on the glass. Slowly, he pushes the glass at Cullen.

Cullen fights the urge to reach for the back of his neck. He looks at the glass, and back at the Inquisitor before taking it. He’s not sure what’s happening here, but it seems important, perhaps some ritual he can only hope to perform correctly. He hesitates for a brief moment before he drinks. The Inquisitor still hasn’t blinked, and Cullen’s eyes are starting to water in sympathy.  
  
The liquor has a faint mineral scent, nearly metallic, and the first touch of it on his tongue is almost sweet. The faint, slightly oily texture is odd, but not unpleasant. All of this is, of course, until he swallows and the astringent chemical _burn_ of it surges through his throat and nose, driving out even the sawdust and stale beer smells of the tavern. He sucks in a harsh breath and resists the urge to cough. He drinks again, finishing the cup. His mouth waters in protest, and he swallows once, twice before returning the glass, sliding it back across the tabletop, breathing through his teeth. His eyes are watering in earnest now; he swipes at them with the roll of his sleeve. It’s not _maraas-lok_ , but few things are. Still, it’s as close as he’s had in years.

He sips at his brandy, mild in comparison, and desperately wishes it was water.  
  
The Inquisitor’s mouth quirks in what might be amusement. It is only Cole’s comments— _you’re not sharp… you can help_ — that keep Cullen from wondering if he has made a mistake tonight.

In another conscious mirroring, Cullen takes a breath and finishes his own cup, pouring another draught of brandy before arching a brow and pushing it carefully at the Inquisitor. He’s aware of the challenge in this, and hopes that this strangeness doesn’t degenerate into a drinking contest. He likes the rituals in the Chantry because they’re familiar and comforting. There is little here that is either.  
  
The Inquisitor drinks, rolls a mouthful thoughtfully, and then drains the cup, sliding it back across the table. “Not Antivan.”  
  
“No,” he smiles, “but Cabot charges like it is.”  
  
The Inquisitor chuffs a laugh. “Cabot has he heart of a true mercenary. I’m certain his progeny will be fat on Inquisition gold for generations to come.” He considers the dark bottle of not- _maraas-lok_ for a moment before touching a fingertip to it. Cullen can feel the gentle gathering of mana like a song he can’t quite make out anymore—not without lyrium in his blood to sing counterpoint—and likewise feels the moment the Inquisitor releases it, quiet as a sigh. Ice crystals trace delicate lines on the glass, and a faint mist falls in curled wisps, vanishing just before the tabletop. A breath in the cold.

Hands tightening on his own cup, Cullen knows he is staring. _Maker_. The Inquisitor watches him watch the blossoming frost. Measuring. It makes something in Cullen's chest tighten, and he wrenches his gaze back to his own cup, face suddenly warm. He tells himself it’s only from the drink.  
  
Again, he consciously relaxes his shoulders, unlocking his fingers from around his cup. The face in the knothole gazes back at him, offering no commentary.

“ _Sulemar_ ,” the Inquisitor says with the careful enunciation of the slightly drunk. “Cabot got it from a trader in the Dales. We — _Dalish_ — make it from roots. This is not the same, but enough to make me…” he pushes a long hand into his hair, fumbling for the word. More strands fall loose from the disheveled braid.  
  
“Homesick?” Cullen supplies.  
  
“Close enough,” he says quietly, drinking again. They sit like that for a long moment, the silence stretching out. Cullen sips at his brandy, listening to the strains of conversation from downstairs and the gentle scrape of glass against the tabletop. It’s almost comforting, soothing the itch on the back of his neck that feels like spiders.  
  
Cullen hasn’t thought of home in a very long time, and isn’t sure anymore where he would consider home to be. Honnleath is gone, blighted, and he hasn’t seen his siblings in almost twenty years. All of his memories of there, of them, are frozen in time. He seldom makes time to answer Mia’s letters, but he is still grateful to receive them.  
  
He’s willing to sit here and get drunk with the Inquisitor, but he’s also pretty sure that this is not exactly what Cole meant by helping.  
  
“Do you know, before Deshanna sent me to the Conclave, I’d never seen a real glass cup. I’d only read about them in the human storybooks my brother traded rabbits for. I didn’t believe they were real.” His mouth twists, a bitter echo of the half-smile from a moment ago, and he scrubs both hands across his face, smearing his kohl.  
  
“This is your Keeper? I thought her name was Istimaethoriel.” Cullen is a bit proud of saying it correctly, or mostly correctly. Josephine had worked with all of them, coaching them through the pronunciation of elven names.

The Inquisitor tilts his head. “That’s her… Family name is the best term for it, like _Rutherford_ for you. Deshanna is her given name.”  
  
“So Lavellan is, what then?”  
  
“Our clan.” He draws a finger through the frost on the bottle, tracing shapes that Cullen doesn't recognize. “For you, it would be akin to your hometown, or similar.”  
  
Cullen is starting to get a sense of all the things he doesn’t know. It’s not his place to ask the Inquisitor to educate him in this, but the books he’s read so far are inaccurate and painfully biased, even to his eyes. “Andraste’s ass. So every time you’ve been addressed as Inquisitor Lavellan…”  
  
“None of that is my name, Commander Honnleath.” The Inquisitor snorts and takes the last mouthful of spirits from his glass, then unfolds his sleeve a bit to rub at a spot there that Cullen can’t see. He sighs, pushes the sleeve up and pours another draught.  
  
“Josephine is going to have a fit. May I ask…?”

“Alhannon. It was my mother’s name; Dalish are matrilineal.” The Inquisitor’s voice is thick and rough, his eyes smeared with kohl, the dark smudges blurring the details of his  swirling _vallaslin_.  
  
“It’s lovely,” Cullen manages, a few seconds too late to escape awkwardness.  
  
It’s not right that Cullen should see him like this: sorrowful and lost, exposed here where any might see. From their first meeting at Haven, the man had worn his authority like a comfortable cloak. Tall and golden, even then he radiated confidence and power, accustomed to being responsible for others, to caring for his clan.

He has the sudden, impulsive urge to take a knee and swear himself again to this outsider, this _elf_ , that Andraste sent them, to be his sword and shield against any who would do him harm. To be what he dreamed as a boy— a faithful templar, defending the mage in his care. He takes another breath and reminds himself sternly that he is already so sworn, and does not know if such a gesture would be welcome.

It takes him long moments to find his voice. “Your brother is a hunter?”  
  
The Inquisitor hums in agreement. “When I was little I wanted to be just like him.” The corner of his mouth pulls in a half smile that doesn’t reach his eyes at all, and he points to the faded scars on his face. “I got these for my trouble. Shortly afterward, my magic surfaced. Our Second had been killed by a bandit, so Deshanna took me as an apprentice.”  
  
Cullen swallows against the lump in his throat and drains his cup again. It’s more than he has ever heard the Inquisitor speak at once, let alone about himself. “Will you go back to them when this is over?” He leaves any other possible outcome unspoken. This ordeal will eventually end, and Corypheus will die. There is no other option — they must succeed.  
  
The Inquisitor shakes his head. “No, my brother died at the Conclave.” He takes a drink, eyes focused on the dark wood of the tabletop, and draws a hissing breath through his teeth. “I asked him to come with me,” he says quietly. “I always felt safer when he was there.”  
  
After a long minute he looks up and meets Cullen’s eyes. “As for my clan…” He takes another long breath and twists his glass against the table, grinding the bottom into the wood. “I am an exiled Dalish apostate, so-called herald of a human prophet and the leader of an army heretical to the religion founded on her teachings. So… no.”  
  
“Exiled? When did this happen?”  
  
He looks down at his gloved hand. “About the same time this did, I think. The Dalish can be remarkably intolerant of certain… transgressions. I’ve known from the beginning that my— my return is unlikely.”  
  
Cullen’s hears too clearly the words the Inquisitor does not speak, and his chest tightens at the thought of such loss. He’s _chosen_ to stay apart from his family, for his own reasons. Even now, the past ten years feel like a fever dream he is only just stirring from. But he’s always taken comfort in knowing that they will welcome him if… when he chooses to return. To have that taken from him… he can only imagine. “Inquisitor, I’m—”

“Talas, please.”  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
The Inquisitor gives a weary smile, and tips his cup in mock salute. “And so you have it,” he says, then grows serious, golden eyes shining in the torchlight. “Once, at Haven, you offered me friendship. Are we friends, Cullen?”  
  
Cullen sits back, unsure what to say. He’s had few in his life that he could ever call friends, and he’s not sure now what this means, or how to reach out and accept what’s being offered. Except to simply take it, and trust that any meaning will make itself known. “Haven seems like a very long time ago. But, yes. I would like that.”  
  
The Inquisitor’s fingers have wandered back to the knot in his hair, unraveling the intricate braid a bit at a time. The tangle near the end is smaller, but still impressive. “I hear my name so seldom anymore. Even Cassandra calls me Inquisitor most of the time.”  
  
Cullen can’t help it, but truthfully, he doesn’t really try. He smiles slowly. “She calls you ‘Inquisitor’?”  
  
The tips of the Inquis—of _Talas’s_ ears turn pink. He sits up a little straighter. “Not like that— not _then_. Just, most of the time. She says it helps her keep things separate in her head, the parts that are bound to duty, and the parts that… aren’t.”

“The Seeker is a woman of singular focus.” Cullen’s comment falls into a long moment of quiet, like a stone slipping into the darkness of a deep lake, and like that, the moment is over. Cullen can almost feel the steady downward pull, and there is a brief pang of regret for the lighter mood they had almost grasped. Maker’s mercy, there are reasons he seldom drinks.  
  
“I can’t do it like she does, I can’t keep it separate.” The Inqui— _Talas_ pours again, still speaking, his voice even and calm. They might as well be discussing boot requisitions, for all that. “I was never supposed to… to cut myself into parts like this. _This_ part to be Dalish, and _this_ part to be the Herald, and _this_ part to be the Inquisitor.” He drains the cup and pours another measure. The spirit slides down the sides of the glass as he tilts it, catching at the light. “And this part to be a killer.”

They are all killers, here. Cullen is hard-pressed to remember what it felt like _before_ he became adept at scrubbing blood from the niches of his armor. Was he ever really that young? Even so, Talas has never shown much in the way of regret or sympathy for the Venatori or those in command of the red templars— those who have chosen their own doom. It’s fates of the innocent and the unwitting that leave him staring at the map markers in the War Room, trying to find the best solutions for the most people. It’s the same impulse that has him chasing lost livestock across half the Hinterlands— he feels responsible. Cullen bides his silence, giving Talas enough time to collect his thoughts and his words.

It doesn’t take long as long as Cullen expects.  
  
Talas rubs hard at the palm of his left hand. “I know— I’ve—” He takes a slow breath, a drink, and keeps rubbing at the mark. “I’ve heard it, you know. Everyone has a platitude to offer. Well, after they stopped wanting to kill me for murdering the Divine.” His voice takes on the cadence of one reciting by rote. “No one could have foreseen what Corypheus would do. Any blame resides with him. The invitation for my brother to attend the Conclave didn’t force him to come. He made his own choices that day, as I made mine. It could have easily been anyone that survived, or no one. It was chance, or luck, or I really was _chosen by fucking Andraste_.”

Cullen turns his cup slowly with one hand. “If this is luck, I’d just as soon not have any.”  
  
Talas nods and scrubs both hands across his thighs. “That’s more or less what Varric said. And all of that is fucking lovely, except I’m the one who heard Justinia cry out. I’m the one who caught the orb.” He drinks again, “And _I’m_ the one who caused that explosion and killed all those people. Killed the entire delegation from Clan Lavellan. Killed my brother.”

He rubs his hands across his face again, fingertips leaving long dark smears of kohl behind. “…I can’t keep it separate.”  
  
There are no words that Cullen can offer. That Corypheus is the ultimate agent of this tragedy does nothing to abate the guilt for being even an unwitting instrument in so much destruction. That for each life lost, uncounted more are being saved is cold comfort when his brother and a sizable number of his clan are numbered among the dead. There are no words. There is no comfort for this.  
  
No, the only thing Cullen has ever found that keeps him on his feet and functioning, even a little, is a sharp detachment of the feeling parts— the human parts— of himself. Keeping it separate.  
  
Cullen does reach for his neck at that. This he understands... the partitioning of the self, taking all the bits that make you a _person_ and sealing them away from distasteful things. He closes his eyes and sucks a breath deep enough to make his lungs ache, the stench of blood and rot thick at the back of his throat. He stomach rolls around a knot of too much brandy and too little sleep, and he swallows hard. He really should have thought to bring food.

The problem, really, isn’t in locking those softer parts away. That’s frighteningly easy. Follow orders, sing the Chant, respect the chain of command. The Maker will deliver you. _Mages aren’t people_. No, the hard part is letting them back out again, and learning to live with what you’ve done. He asks, as much for himself as anything, “Which part gets to be Talas?”

Talas picks a splinter loose from the middle of the table, too far in to have been worn smooth by cups and elbows. “In my clan, I was a healer, a caretaker. I stitched wounds, set bones, helped mothers bring children into the world. Even… even my magic. Ice to soothe a fever. Kindle a fire to boil bandages or stave off a chill. The first time I used my magic to kill, I wept for a week afterward, sick to the very heart of myself.” He rolls the splinter between his fingertips before flicking it into the darkness by the window. “Now killing has become matter-of-course. Which part gets to be _Talas_?” He looks down, this time into his empty glass, tilting it and watching as the remaining drops trace faint lines on the inside. “The same part anymore that remains to be a healer.”

Cullen can’t be certain precisely how long ago it was, but it can't have been more than a handful of weeks. Maybe a month or two— time is an odd thing on the mountain. Deep in the teeth of withdrawal, body and mind tangled in knots of suffering, he couldn't see anything beyond the pain and rage and the _desperate_ craving for lyrium— needing to be relieved of command, to be ordered to take the lyrium, to be able to stop struggling. To have the choices, and the responsibility, lifted from him. Talas had reached out to steady him then, bracing his shoulder against the cold stone wall with surprising strength, and had listened without judgment as Cullen poured out the horrors of Kinloch.  
  
And after he was done, still shaking like he'd fly apart, Talas had cleaned up the broken lyrium philter, and instead of relieving Cullen of decisions, validated the choices he had made, speaking quietly of courage, and faith. His faith in _Cullen_.

If those are not the actions of a healer, Cullen doesn’t know what is, and something in his chest pulls tight at the idea that Talas feels like he’s failed. Somehow Cullen manages to shape that hurt into a question. “Who were you unable to help?”  
  
The silence stretches out for long moments; even the chatter of the soldiers and scouts downstairs is winding down so late into the evening. The bard is tuning her lute, plucking out slow, dissonant strains of no song he can recognize. He drains the last swallow of brandy from his cup, and realizes that he’s lost track of how much he’s had. The room isn’t starting to sway yet, but he’s no longer certain how steady his legs will be when he stands. Cold air whistles through the gaps in the window frame, making the torchlight flicker.  
  
Talas twists his glass again, and reaches for the bottle of _sulemar_. The frost is melting, the puddle on the tabletop ever widening in a dark stain, but he doesn’t freeze it again, just swipes up a droplet of water as it falls, rubbing it between his fingertips, considering. He pours a finger’s width for each of them, and wipes his hand on his shirt. “Harding asked us to look for her friend,” he exhales on a chuff of bitter laughter. “We found him.”

“Grandin?” Cullen had seen his name in Harding’s request, and on the rolls of the dead. It feels like a final piece of the puzzle falling into place. Cullen can feel it— _knows_ — that this is somehow personal, but can’t quite put that part together yet. “How did you know him?”  
  
“I didn’t know him, not really.” Talas’s mouth twists, bitter, angry. “Just another elven scout among the rest.”  
  
“Scout? His name was on the list of mages coming from Redcliffe.”

Talas waves a hand, a bit unsteadily, in his direction. “That makes you the one person so far who remembers that. Though, to be fair, I haven’t seen Leliana yet. She knows— she had to _know_ —” His face twists again in shame or rage or grief, and Cullen looks away, affording what privacy he can.

There is really nothing to say to that, so Cullen doesn’t try. He sips carefully at the _sulemar_ but doesn’t notice the burn anymore. Maybe it’s more like _maraas-lok_ than he thought. Or maybe he’s just too drunk to notice. He asks a different question instead, one he thinks he already knows the answer to. “Cassandra mentioned a rage demon in her report. Grandin was killed by it?”

Another soft laugh with no humor in it at all, and suddenly Cullen knows where this is going, where this story will end. Talas has both hands wrapped around his glass so tightly that his fingertips are as white as his glove. “He wanted to fight. He wanted— but his magic— he said didn’t have the _talent_ for destruction like that. So he took up a sword.” The sound of Talas breathing, slow and rough, is like an itch deep under his skin.

“The abominations I’ve seen,” Talas continues, haltingly, “they… they didn’t look like people anymore. Grandin looked like himself, _sounded_ like himself. He begged to serve. Have you seen that before?”  
  
Cullen looks out of the window again, heart pounding in his chest, rushing in his ears. The feeling of spiders is strong on the back of his neck. And the cold from the window is suddenly not enough against the sticky taste of soot catching on his tongue, the coppery scent of blood that is never far enough away. The chantry explosion in Kirkwall sounded like thunder at first, or close enough that he’d looked up, anticipating rain. Instead, stone and ash fell, the night echoing with screams and the sweet stench of burned flesh. Anders had looked all too human. “Yes.”

He shifts in his seat, uneasy. In his mind, he counts out the steps across his office from the dummy, behind his desk to the bookshelves, past the ladder and around to the western door. He could go from there, across the barbican and along the walls to check on the watch, or down to the training yard to spar with Bull or Cassandra or _anyone_ he could cross swords with. Someplace to put the coiling restlessness in his bones.

Idleness and drink have never been his refuge, and while he would like to believe that it’s Cole’s insistence that he can help that keeps him here, he knows differently. He’s never been one to abandon a person in need. The room sways only a little, but he hasn’t stood yet, and hard experience has taught him that what seems like a good idea from a tavern bench does not always translate well into action. A walk along the battlements is not the best idea right now. Talas has his eyes down, draped in shadows, loose hair falling like curtains around his face. Cullen bites down on a mouthful of things better left unsaid.  
  
“He invited it— the demon— invited it in— so he could fight. And I thought— The Avvar… the spirits are different there. He looked like _himself_ , until…”  
  
_Until he didn’t_. Cullen’s imagination can fill in the details too easily.

Most of Talas’s hair is down now, and the snarl is an ugliness there in the middle of something beautiful. His face twists, his shoulders pulling up, defensive. “I don’t— killing is— and Creators, or Andraste, or whoever help me— this wasn’t _that_. This felt like murder. _He begged_.” Yellow hair pools on the table as Talas leans his head, just for a moment, on his hands.

“He begged,” he repeats in a small voice, “and I killed him anyway.” The wet rasp of his breath is ragged, too loud. He breathes, just that, for long moments, clutching his glass so tightly that Cullen worries he might break it. “I can’t keep it separate,” he says.  
  
Cullen’s throat is dry, so it takes him longer than it should to find his voice again. “No one expects you to. It’s not something anyone should have to learn.” The words are meaningless, small steps from being platitudes. The _world_ expects Talas to save it from Corypheus, and to do that he will somehow have to live with the cost. Victories are paid for in blood.

He’s never been good with words, and cannot find the courage to reach out and grasp Talas’s hand, or lay a hand on his arm, or any of the other small gestures of comfort and friendship he has seen others perform. So he holds his cup, counts the steps across his office again, and lets the moment pass.  
  
The small face in the knothole keeps its own counsel.  
  
Talas makes a noncommittal noise, stiffly unwinding fingers from around the glass only to roll it between his palms a little too hard. Even so, Cullen can see his hands shake. The quiet stretches between them, only a little uncomfortable, a little too intimate. Even the bard is quiet now, and the tavern noises have faded to almost nothing. Cullen turns his gaze away, looking out the small window into the night. From here, he can see a brazier on the battlements, dimly lighting the side of the quartermaster’s tower.  
  
Again, there is that gentle sigh in the back of his mind that almost reaches his ears. When he glances back down, the bottle is again covered in lacy frost.  
  
“What’s it like?” Cullen asks the question without thought. “To be a mage, I mean.”  
  
Talas looks at him, a small frown of confusion, or concentration, or offense at Cullen overstepping his boundaries. Or for simply choosing his moments poorly. _Call me by my name_ is one thing, _ask me intrusive personal questions_ is quite another. Well, more intrusive questions. Cullen wishes he could take the words back, and ask Dorian if he’s so curious.

“You were a templar. You’ve wielded power.”  
  
Even now, he can close his eyes and _taste_ the lyrium, feel the well of strength it gave him and the deep, deep pleasure of unleashing it. He tries not to reach for it anymore, not certain he could stand knowing that it’s empty. They say that the body doesn’t remember, but his bones know otherwise. “That’s… it’s different.” He cannot say precisely how, just that it is.

Talas follows his gaze out the window for a long moment. Cullen can see shadows on the tower wall as soldiers on watch huddle around the brazier. They shouldn’t linger so long, but he can’t really begrudge them a bit of warmth in the frozen dark. It’s getting late, and the watch will be changing soon. Idly, he wonders what Talas sees.  
  
Talas takes a breath, and reaches down to pull a knife from his belt before handing it over hilt first.  
  
Confused, Cullen takes it. It’s some of Harritt’s best work— silverite, with an ornate drakestone guard. He traces his fingertips over the bevel, careful of the edge.  
  
Talas looks at him, considering, then glances over his shoulder. “Could you strike that post from here?”  
  
Cullen weighs the knife in his hand and gauges the distance. “Yes.”  
  
“Would you?”  
  
“Right now? No.” He turns the knife and passes it back. If the Inquisitor wishes a test of his skill, he’s happy to go use the training yard, or even the dummy in his office. In the morning. When he’s sober. He wonders if Cassandra is finished ruining that dummy from earlier.  
  
“But you are secure in the knowledge that you _could_. That’s what it’s like. Knowing that power is waiting for you, should you care to use it.”

Cullen hums, considering. The differences seem obvious, even having seen how diligently mages— at least in the Circles— study and practice. He knows better than to discount skills that are different from his own, but it’s still a hard thing to consider placing magecraft on the same level as skills hard-earned though blood and bruises. He shakes his head, left with more questions than answers, and vaguely unsatisfied.  
  
Across the table, Talas finishes taking down his hair. It’s not as long as Cullen expected from the intricacy of the braid, but still wholly beautiful and impractical. The knot at the end remains, though, catching on Talas’s fingers as he shakes out the long yellow waves. Years and lifetimes ago, wild mustard grew in fallow fields behind his family’s house, and the cheery springtime blossoms were similarly beautiful in the sun. He’d hated the spicy greens as a child. Now, they remind him of long days and the rich smell of irrigated fields, the hum of insects and his family’s love.  
  
His brother’s coin is a small lump under his left heel.  
  
Talas pushes a long lock of hair back from where it has fallen across his face again and looks at him, too direct. “Which part of you gets to be _Cullen_?” The question takes Cullen aback, even though it shouldn’t, and his desire to _move_ , to get up and pace, to run, is almost overwhelming. “How do you do it? I’ve seen you — templar, teacher, commander, advisor. How is _Cullen_ not lost in all of that?”

 _You’re not sharp_. Right now, Talas is sharp enough for both of them.  
  
Cullen drains his cup once, pours another measure and drinks again while he tries to find a way to answer. A way that doesn’t say how easy it is to take all the soft parts of yourself, all the damage and broken wreckage of a person and shove it all down into a box. And to bury that box far away from the people and things that need you to be _not_ soft and broken.

And how easeful it can be to retreat behind the mask of duty and forget about that box. Even for a while. Instead he looks at the plank wall over Talas’s shoulder, avoiding eye contact like a good soldier addressing a superior. The lights on the other side are still there, winking through the uneven gaps in the partition. He takes another breath, embracing the simple beauty of those small lights. And speaks a different truth. “I’m not certain,” he says slowly, “who that person is anymore.”  
  
“Who are you, then, if you are not Cullen?”  
  
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”  
  
“Maybe not. Simple questions rarely have easy answers. But the question remains. I don’t know all of your story, but I know enough. After so much trauma, so much loss, what remains?”  
  
“I hardly know anymore. The Inquisition. The fight against Corypheus. My men.” It’s a better rendition of duty than he’s seen before, not a shield against himself like his blind obedience in Kirkwall, or a thin justification to mete out vengeance for old hurts. If this duty was all that was left to him, he thinks it would be enough. He likes to believe that he would be here in some capacity, would stand up again to do what’s right, even if Cassandra had not come to him at the peak of his disillusionment with the Order. But this isn’t what Talas is asking. What is left of _himself_ , beyond service to the cause?

What is left of either of them.  
  
He struggles, holding his cup like an anchor.  
  
Sparring with Bull, and the chance to unleash his strength and skill, to use his body for something besides paperwork. Dorian cheating at chess, his endless stories—each more outrageous than the last—and his delighted laughter when Cullen pushes back with a joke or an off-color comment of his own. Cassandra sharing books of poetry, surprised to find him so well read, and his tastes so broad. Josephine indulging his sweet tooth.  
  
Talas asking for his friendship, quietly adjusting his ideas of what it means to be a man, and a mage.  
  
All these pieces of himself, in other people’s care. He swallows against the tightness in his throat. “Friends,” he says finally. Yesterday he might not have called it that, he might have said camaraderie, spoken of his colleagues, of their value to the Inquisition. Not of their value to _him_. Most days friendship seems too much to ask. But he never had to ask, did he— they just gave, unstinting, shaming him with their generosity. “Knowing that I’m not alone.”

Words have never been his strength, but he tries, he tries. “When I cannot— I don’t— ” He rubs a hand over his head, definitely spinning now. “I try to trust their judgment, and their judgment of me, when I cannot trust my own.”  
  
It’s not the answer Talas was looking for, but it’s the one Cullen has to give him. He works his tongue over his teeth, trying to moisten his mouth, gone dry again. “I try to be worthy of that.”  
  
Talas looks away, out the window again, blinking too fast. The watch changed some time ago, and a fresh group of soldiers lingers too long around the brazier. Cullen still can’t manage to be upset, but he makes a mental note to install more braziers at strategic points along the walls. He makes another note to avoid Cabot’s brandy. Dorian will be beside himself poking fun at Cullen’s hangover in the morning.  
  
Talas swallows hard. “I would say that I’d drink to that, but my ass is numb and I’m very drunk. I think I’m done for the evening.” He picks up the dagger, still lying on the table from earlier, considers for a moment, and slices the knot from his hair. “There is something to be said for simple solutions.”  
  
Maybe there is. Cassandra has her sharp delineation between duty and love. Cullen has his boxes filled with the parts he keeps safe and hidden. Talas will find his own ways of coping, his own lies to tell. Victories are paid in blood.  
  
Talas glances critically at the jagged, shorn ends of his hair. “It will grow back.”  
  
~*~*~*~  
End

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my excellent readers sprocket and JiMPage. They make everything better. Especially this story. All mistakes are mine, and are probably the result of not taking their sage advice.


End file.
